Sigmund H. Danziger Jr. Distinguished Lecture Series

Sigmund H. Danziger Jr. Distinguished Lecture

In March 1987 Robert S. Danziger, MD 1980, endowed a fund in honor of his father Sigmund H. Danziger Jr., AB 1937, an inveterate reader and student of the classics. To this was added a gift from a challenge grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities with the object of bringing to campus "an established scholar of classical literature, who has made substantial contributions to the critical analysis of classical literature, or has been exceptionally skilled at inspiring an appreciation for classical literature." Over the years the prestige of this annual event led to a widening interpretation of the term "classical literature" and while classicists such as Sir Kenneth Dover, Charles Segal and Simon Goldhill have numbered among the Danzigers, so have early modern scholars Natalie Zemon Davis, Joan DeJean, and Mary Poovey, Hindi literary specialist David Schulman, philosopher and historian of science Ian Hacking.